Blues album back cover

fjrabon · Mar 22, 2015

Was going for a gritty feel.

Needed the top left and upper right part to be fairly dead space so that writing could go in those places (management info and track list, respectively. Bottom left had to also be relatively dead space wise for copyright info.

Set up a shoot through umbrella, speedlight triggered by remote outside of a floor to ceiling window. He was basically looking into the window/flash. Very low lowered speedlight from the end of the hall behind him to get just a touch of detail on the left side and guitar. Also to keep the back of his head from blending completely into the blackness.

90mm

Thoughts?

Derrel · Mar 22, 2015

My only concern is that his eye appears as if it is straining hard right..as if to look toward the viewer...and there's two weird purple spots, one on the back edge of where the guitar strings go into the body of the guitar, the other on the string tensioning devices...but that eye thing....that just looks...weird. The dark space for text overlay all makes total sense.

fjrabon · Mar 22, 2015

Derrel said:
My only concern is that his eye appears as if it is straining hard right..as if to look toward the viewer...and there's two weird purple spots, one on the back edge of where the guitar strings go into the body of the guitar, the other on the string tensioning devices...but that eye thing....that just looks...weird. The dark space for text overlay all makes total sense.

Hmm, I think the eye thing is the fact that the catchlight is pretty big, because I used a pretty big light source and thus it makes the non-catch light (I think his eyelash) look like his iris. Never noticed that, maybe because I was there and knew that wasn't the way he was looking, but I can sort of see it since you point it out. His eyes were looking dead straight forward, out the window. The blue/purple spots, IDK, this is the file they sent me back, which added some sort of blue toner. The original I sent them was pure monochrome.

edit: I guess whatever toner they used gave a purple/blue tint to specular highlights. Those pieces are chrome, so they went pure specular in a couple of spots. Then when you add in the toner you get that weird purple spot. Didn't look weird in pure B&W, but the toner cast makes it look weirder.

Gary A. · Mar 22, 2015

I don't see any purple on my monitor, (but I'm on the laptop). The eye thing is disturbing ... odd ... but disturbing.
I'd burn in the wood detail behind the head, on top and to the right of the face, stopping at the top of the horizontal beam. And, on my monitor, maybe a tad more darkening on the front of the face. But these are nothing but nits ... overall well done ... (except for the musician giving you the eye).

fjrabon · Mar 22, 2015

after looking back over the image, I think they also added more highlight contrast and sharpening (in addition to the aforementioned blue toner) when this went to print on the CD cover. The additional highlight contrast having the effect of the eye thing, where in the original there's detail in the eye, but there it blew out the entire front of the eye. ugh. I guess it won't be the last time a client (or in this case the client's packaging people) mess up a shot.

Derrel · Mar 22, 2015

I used to edit a newspaper in college: one time, the printers forgot to halftone a photo!!!! It printed as a SOLID BLACK rectangle!!!!

fjrabon · Mar 22, 2015

Derrel said:
I used to edit a newspaper in college: one time, the printers forgot to halftone a photo!!!! It printed as a SOLID BLACK rectangle!!!!

Yep, finally get an assignment you're actually excited about, and then they destroy your "masterpiece" in printing lol. ah well, I'm still pretty happy with it overall. When I get the copy of the physical CD, I'll take a picture of what it looks like with all the wording, etc on it.

Kawaracer · Mar 22, 2015

I don't know the artist but for me the pic doesn't say Blues, I'm not feeling any music looking at this pic. For me music is emotion, I miss some emotion.
I' not a expert on portraits. I do live music the most, maybe I look from the wrong point of view.

fjrabon · Mar 22, 2015

Kawaracer said:
I don't know the artist but for me the pic doesn't say Blues, I'm not feeling any music looking at this pic. For me music is emotion, I miss some emotion.
I' not a expert on portraits. I do live music the most, maybe I look from the wrong point of view.

The emotion we were going for was melancholy and contemplative. A songwriter sitting there trying to find a song. Not a performer on stage vibe.